Hey guys, I am Harsh Rajat, started my entrepreneur journey from 2011, created 360 web browser (iOS), then went to app marketing and finally search engine for indian e-commerce without funding... AMA

About Me: A little backstory about me: I started as an entrepreneur back in 2011 along with my other co-founder and have worked our way up till here without any funding nor any monetary support from outside. In this journey, I and him have both picked up several coding languages, designing and management skills and have still not expanded our team (from the original 3 which shrunk down to 2 when we decided to work on GrabShack - http://grabshack.com).

I am the sole techie who created one of the first third party iOS web browser: 360 Web Browser (Digital Poke) in 2012. We then moved into promotion of third party apps via another company which we co-founded: 3 Magic Shots in 2013 (Which was responsible for moving many apps to the top 10 of the US App Store) before finally venturing into creating GrabShack.

I would love to talk about technology or entrepreneurship or the experience of starting a new business or literally anything else /r/India might be interested in.

Edit 1: Guys, Thanks for all the questions, I am replying to the answers to the replies now and of course will reply to anything else you have in mind.

In the end, I would say that my journey exist only because of my parents sacrifice, my wife's (Richa / college sweetheart) continuous patience / understanding and love and my best friend (Robin) for his sacrifices, I was lucky to have his wife (Sakshi) as one to support us in our needs without caring for her own honeymoon period. So while, I was determined, It was only because of these peeps that we were able to reach where we are.

It was quite humbling and challenging to reply honestly to these and I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to do this AMA.

Respect to you, your story gives me hope for myself! Any tips for success for amateur app devs?

Thanks... Sure, Firstly, you need to decide the platform, pick iOS if it's global market you want to target or Android if it's India or developing nations. If the app is not resource hungry then you could pick an app engine like unity to target all. For us it was writing games on cocos2d-iphone and converting it thru Apportable (not that was a year and a half back) and it got us near native performance for Android.

One of the strongest reason I believe we did well was because of the quality of the code and the app designing (UI/UX) so do make sure to nail it right. 360 Browser had an arc inspired by Assassins Creed and it did really well so don't shy away from breaking or challenging boundaries. We struggled for a year and then blew up the money we got on an expensive euro trip which on hindsight could have helped us propel forward, get staff, etc so do make sure to budget well after the semi-success (and have loads of fun after you become the next big thing :)), Something I wish someone would have told me back then.

Why do you think Grabshack is a good idea? Isn't this a little a like CashKaro and other coupon's website that lists discounts and offers? And why list discounts of items of ALL categories? The whole website get's a bit cluttered to navigate through.

A couple of reasons. First, it's not as much as a coupon lister than it's a best deal finder... we integrated coupons also when we thought that GrabShack should be a single stop for everything. And second, and the most important one is that we are not a deal aggregator as much as a search engine which uses its very own semantics engine to understand and create an odd 100-500 points of any product (based on it's learning from users, product info on other sites, twitter and facebook trends)

It then leverages those points to provide you with the best matching results of what you are looking for along with the cheapest price you can find online. Simply put, GrabShack looks into all the e-commerce websites and instantly understands what's happening (kinda like a human / Siri of iPhone) which means it can pull out results from details even when they are absent. For example even the most vague searches (like ISBN of any book or blue color shirt) would give you accurate (and best) results. As GrabShack constantly tries to understand the website and the behavior of its users, it adapts trends before they become a fad (or so we would like to believe :)).

For example, we are trying to create Google (Sorta... like huge sorta...) while the other websites use just their databases to pull deals which should mean that GrabShack would give you the best price for anything (though sometimes it might slip as we tweak it further) as it searches in real time and relates while the others sites which we have tried generally fails.

But don't take my word for it, try searching something like a full product name or ISBN or anything that comes to your mind on GrabShack and the same thing on these sites and see if you get better results (let us know if you don't though :), we are still tweaking the search algos and any feedback helps us in making it stronger.

I couldn't understand the last question so please elaborate a bit more as we created GrabShack to be non-cluttered and we would want it to be like that.

I meant, why not just list deals for ONLY electronics or apparels? When you go through the deals websites, it has a typical design. Clothes, grooming accessories, mobile phone, kid's items, all in the same carousel. Doesn't that confuse the customer?

Thanks. You are right, most of the deals/coupons website follow a similar design. On GrabShack, you can search for pretty much everything you want irrespective of the categories as it searches in real time.

The categories listed on top are some hand picked featured deals. We think you are right and we should distinguish it a bit more so that people know that searching and going through those hand curated deals aren't the same. Added as a ToDo... Thanks for pointing this out.

Thanks, I believe that you should really gauge your competition... it would be very improbable to create something totally unique since there are over millions of apps now, but that doesn't mean you can't do it better! In fact, I really believe that did something better will always knockout did something first... See iPod or any Apple Inventions ;).

For example, Microsoft launched pix which takes before and after photos and uses AI to find the best one and is one of the top trending even when Apple is known for its photos. So there will always be a space to do something unique, the couple of questions you should ask yourself is:

Does my app save time or money more than others?

And can it be done by other people before I get success?

Usually, when the answers is in positive for both of the questions then you really have something which the world would love to use. Another advice is to think ahead of time. In my opinion, every trend has a loop and if you are able to predict it before most of the crowd does then you have done half of the work already... examples are how physics games became a trend then 2 minute gameplay and so on and on... if you predict the next trend before it gets picked up then you will for surely get to the top.

Hey Thanks... App business is really great and we plan to return to work on 360 once we stabilize grabshack. mobile app business will keep on growing and as I have said, it works for indie and big players so it's an awesome way to start on.

Also, we have been advised so many times on going b2b (business catering to business) and I really think that it's where the money is (with good safety net) so you can probably do that before serving to consumers if you feel jittery.

Yes, we did... infact, we were lucky to generate money from our first product itself (360 Web Browser), though it didn't come that easy. We launched it in 2011 (worked on it from 2010) and saw it move to top of its category in US App Store only in February of 2013, after which it kept on giving us good money (like 80-90 thousand rupees for each of us - 3 partners). I would say 360 earned us around 50-60 lakhs with around 10 lakhs of starting up + every other expense.

We then launched Meteoric which was capable of downloading YouTube Videos for iOS (again, one of the first) and got our first notice served from RIAA which meant we had to take it off. We also poured in huge chunk of our money on promotion of Meteoric thru which we got the idea of starting 3 Magic Shots, which literally gave nothing till May - June of 2014, very jittery moment for me as I was just running out of money but then it started giving huge returns. I think the revenue we earned from it was around 1.4 crores overall.

All in all, I think I saved up around 20-22 lakhs or so (personal) when we went for reorganizing in mid 2015 which allowed us to start GrabShack and work on it without worrying :)...

Well, There are several on my mind. For starters, don't expect full support from family (ouch!). While I was lucky to get good support from my parents, I always had to take out time to make them understand the stats which mostly came down to money and stability. Both of which didn't happen for a good couple of years which got my external family really jittery and in turn my parents as well.

The other tip is that idea generation and refining sometimes comes from very unexpected places. When we started (in 2010), we knew that we wanted to make an app which everybody could use but never really liked any idea for 2 months or so... And then, while traveling back in an auto-rickshaw, the idea of a web browser came... just like that. So my advice would be to take a break (or several ones) and give your mind a little something else to wonder about, It will always reward you for it :).

Also, when we launched our web browser, it didn't pick up just like that, we had to keep on refining it and marketing it (Read: writing / pleading / stalking several big sites just for a review). Looking back, I would say that we were not too polished and maybe didn't sound human when we approached these guys at first so remember to always take a look at what you do with a fresh perspective.

To move on the pre-stage, remember to find an idea and lay down the plan (even if its vague) before taking a plunge from work / school / college. Identify people and have a team ready to handle different aspects. At the least, you should know people who have the ability to code, design and present... identify what you can or can't do and find the right people for the can't.

Once you have those things ready, be prepared for the first idea to not work and promise yourself to keep on trying and not give up. The first iteration of our web browser was a flop, the second one was as well, the third update nailed it (somewhat), Similarly, 3 Magic Shots didn't perform in its first avatar, 6 months goes by and we change the model... still doesn't work, another 4 months go by and we saw our first customer. This has happened to us for every project we worked on, so I would just advice to refine and retry and not give up.

Also, I did make a mistake of having my team fill up with friends which backfired in 2015. My thought process was that we can make this work big with just friends... the result was that I lost few of them and the company performance took a major hit (leading us to retransform and start again). So while working with friends is great (current project is created my me and my childhood friend) and sometimes they would have those talents which are required (as is the case now). But most of the times, it just doesn't work. So get peeps for their abilities and not for the friendship. Establish a organizational order which everybody should follow and you will do great... (remember, its called organization for a reason).

You are right about pleading for review to blogs etc. But it's worth. One of my apps was picked up by a top blog of the platform on the very first day of publishing (out of blue, w/o any direct communication, just based on its quality and extensive functionality) and the downloads literally skyrocketed, 200K in first 30 days. But then for some other apps I was not so lucky and things did not go so well. I think the apps did not sell themselves. Currently working on a largish hybrid app for iOS and Android and hoping for the app to speak for itself and grab some bloggers' eyeballs.

Rightly put, they help bigtime... try to establish a contact network rather than mailing them only before app is launched. People in the end are human no matter the professionalism and they will like you for that.

The first thing I do is being really impulsive... the last time, I got an xbox (which I think is the best decision I did since I missed playing games on PC... had to get a mac when I started). But more than that, I always think of what I am learning and that really helps allay those fears. So, whenever I am not confident which does happen quite a few times, I just tell myself that the things I am learning will never go away. And even if something fails, the experience would get me a better job then other peeps.

So always remember, its not about whether you will fail or not (because you will... I have several times) but the things you learn from it will never die in vain and would benefit you in one way or other and make you better than others in your next project or job.

In you initial days when you did not yet start earning out of your ventures, how did you manage to survive without funding ? Did you do part time development along with full time job or did you do part time jobs along with the development work ?

We took up second jobs to manage our finances. It was total chaos (handling two jobs at once) but in those years, we acquired the most useful thing we could... and that is jugaad (or process refining). We figured ways to automate, to shorten the work of 8 hours in 4 which I think really helped us in propelling forward.

The downside of it.... Me and my co-founder barely enjoyed the social aspect of our life from 24-28, we forced ourselves to drag on to friends birthday party and shied away from family gatherings, So much so that when we did a meeting on who we can talk to (in our friends circle) for promoting grabshack as we have missed quite a few weddings, interactions and just socializing with others. Was it worth it? I would say... yes considering we acquired the skills to do jobs which would require several more people to do, while our family would definitely say a big no :)

Hi, really grateful to you guys for the AMA so it is actually the other way around. Right now its GrabShack, but it keeps on reshuffling. Whenever we launch a new project, the time given to it is usually a lot. After launch, we try to refine the processes... for example, creating a semantics engine and using swarm intelligence was not only required but a necessity for us to make sure that the project auto adapts and learn from its mistakes. We usually maintain a todo list and prioritize the task which should have had happened, other than that... we re-prioritize things and try to find better ways to do it to cut short of time.

I guess having a hierarchy of single authorization also fastens the process. Prioritization and re-prioritization occurs almost every hour but since we love what we do and are childhood friends, it really doesn't feel like burden.

p.s. thinking and prioritizing on bathroom breaks usually works for us but it might not be everybody's cup of tea

Tough question, I would suggest sticking with main stream. so as a iOS developer - learn Swift or Objective-C, for Android - go for java, for Website - go for wordpress, php. Ofcourse, some supplementary languages like sql are also necessary. And the languages / framework choice really depends on how you want to pace through.

I always think that developing a strong analytical / problem solving skill is more important than focusing on new languages. Also, don't pick up an upcoming language as I have been burnt many times while doing so. Instead, I think a better approach is picking something which has already established its dominance, that way... even when its fading out, you can switch to other since it will take longer for it to become extinct then the ones that are just a fad.

The site compares for you with all the websites... flipkart, amazon, paytm, snapdeal, myntra, etc, etc... if you want you can use filter to filter out the results (on the left on desktop) and as a button on mobile when you scroll a bit. Let me know if you still have problems.

Would love to know how do you let the people outside your circle know about a new app. And what is the critical mass of users/downloads for a free app to generate revenue.

Well, A lot of it depends on SEO and app reviews. Have at least 40-45 days reserved for marketing, whenever we did, the downloads / users increased so that's a must. Compile a list of all the marketing websites, app review websites (appadvice, etc) and put them in three tiers (tier 1 for 200k or more fb / twitter follower and so on). Prepare presskit, assets, send them an app invite on day 1, follow it up after 2-4 days... for us tuesday / thursday worked well.

Prepare followups and different pitches but the first followup should be gentle (Many a times reviewer does misses it out by mistake) and then embargo your reviews for app launch and some for pre-buzz. Definitely do a press release (prebuzz / on app launch as well), prmac.com worked wonders for us.

And about SEO, that's where you need to really hit it. Aim for good and relevant keywords (keep some long ones as well)... sensortower.com really worked well for us. As for critical mass of users / downloads for free app, that is around 5k users playing for 10 minutes or so which earned us around ($200-$300) with just the bottom banner. We switched to full banner and the revenue went up and users were still there for a while so you can go for that as well. Do create mini games (like free spinner) or free lives for video as that has given us more revenue and have got users to be more active as well.

Well... the first time we tasted success, we blew it on an expensive vacation which I don't regret that much owing to us working day and night but yeah we could have used it to expand. The second time it happened (in 2013), we expanded but hired more friends... they were passionate but we were running around headless chicken due to the friends taking decisions for roles / responsibilities not bound to them which made sure that we were earning good but not so good to break out of the loop. It eventually forced us to re-organize.

But I guess, I can say from my heart that one of the biggest reason for not expanding was also because of the laziness / comfort zone I had acquired working with friends / in my own room (and having fun). Whenever I came out of that zone (which happened rarely), there were problems since someone or the other didn't believe in the vision or due to creative differences.

We were only able to re-organize ourselves in 2015 when we took a long and hard look at the choices which we could have made when we were close to winning the battle and promised ourselves to act like a single unit (trust me, that's really hard to do)... I still try to look at team India and wonder how they are able to do so well (celebrate each other century and catches) and try to learn out of it, but yeah those are the reasons that I believe led us to not expand.

Having had the opportunity to retrospect, we know that the growth plan forward is to take grabshack to all other platforms (which we are very close at) and once that's done, grow and have a great core 2 team on whom we can rely upon.

We do consult other people regarding VC funding and we might take that step in the future (when we want to expand to other countries). One of the reason, we always hesitate is due to the same comfort zone and the fear of sharing our company with them (totally irrational but that's what we try to fight off). As of now, we have enough money to last us around a couple of years (from previous startups) and we see ourselves recovering our dues in 3-4 months if all goes well so I guess, we will approach a VC when we get there.

Also, a lot of people (in family) who are there have always told us to pitch a product to VC which is already establish to negate on your terms or pitch an idea for them to negate on theirs so there is that as well.

Process refining has to be the most important, hell... even the biggies go after it, so that is the most important. Let me elaborate, during 3 Magic Shots, we used to research on people and their apps, form a reply and send them out manually, which took over 10 hours for 50 or so leads. While we couldn't have taken out the research on people and their apps, we did create a tool to filter out apps that didn't fit our quality criteria... basically created a bookmarklet which removed all the apps rated 3 stars or less having over 500 user reviews from appshopper.com, which made our efforts to evaluate cut down to 20% of time. From here on, we used mail merge which sends email based on the info provided by you on spread sheet cutting our overall efforts to 4 hours for sending 300 emails and getting 5x response in 40% of the time.

This, assembly lining and a lot of other ways to get things done smoother and faster is what made us survive and prosper so numero uno skill I would advise anyone to have is the jugaad tech (and believe me... we are really good at this). The second one is problem solving / analytical approach to anything, I don't really have a proper name for it but it usually is breaking down the problem into smaller steps down to the atomic level, which means that anyone and everyone can google / stackoverflow those steps and solve the mammoth of a problem just like that.

The last skill is understanding that you will never be perfect in everything you do, so knowing where you are not perfect and knowing who can solve that for you will make sure that you are never left dry. I know that I am not good in creating game characters and I suck at artworks and I won't ever be able to become that so accepting that means that I can find someone who can which means the project / idea as a whole can succeed regardless of me knowing everything or not.

Well, above all, we try to listen to other people... Not to everyone, but if the same advice / feedback comes from multiple sources then we address it. Its really hard to accept you are wrong and that is what happens to us that is why we usually try to downplay or remind us to downplay our ego or success.

The quality process we follow is again based on swarm intelligence (and we haven't given a name to it), basically whatever we do, we never attach a name to which one of us did it and follow it through a voting process between family and friends (via pestering most of the time), if one is clearly the winner (70% or higher) then we go with that otherwise we iterate. A/B testing is also something which really comes in handy.

As far as the project management tools are concerned, while I know a few (github, etc), I have never used it much except for manual backups... and I know that's a bad habit which I want to get rid of someday. I guess since we are just two guys working on things (and at max were 5, I never felt the need to do it, I know its catastrophic).

We do outsource testing but its usually friends of friends, this time though, we wanted r/india as we wanted pure, unbiased opinion... we consider this project as something which will put us out of the rat race and for that we need to be out of our comfort zone... was so scared when we posted and didn't imagine that we will be happy after we did a feedback round.

What advice would you give a final year Engineering student? Give as much time as you can to learn, do your own projects / presentations, you might not realize but they do come in handy when you take the dive. Don't listen to your teacher, but do listen / learn from books... thats how I did learned... actual attendance less than 40% but marks were always 70% or more, okay... maybe sometimes only 65%, but you get the point.

You don't need teachers to learn but you need learning and leading to achieve where you want to be.

Which coding languages do you prefer that people should learn? Its not as much learning coding languages as about solving complex problems or breaking them to smaller parts till you understand them... something which helped me thru mobile coding in early 2011 was writing code for 8085... yeah, never thought I can use that knowledge. That experience led me to believe any thing I learned will be used in some part of my life, and that has proven to be true. Again, don't follow teachers but do learn (just like rancho... haha)

Me and my friend are working on some ideas but sometimes we feel like that they won't work out or it's not possible, what do you suggest? Well, that's the great part, don't care right now about whether it works or not but just keep at it. I have given so many projects out to colleges which looking back didn't solve any problems but that's not to say yours won't so if you believe in it... don't let anybody dissuade you. Hell! The solutions we had some people in colleges were much better than us so called learned ones, so if you think its worth it... then its worth it :)

at the least, it will get you ahead of your colleagues, and at the best... it could be the next facebook. FYI: I would either of the options.

Is it any good if we do community based projects? That's always a great thing to do, I was too lazy to do it but always admired my college mates who did it so go for it if you can. One advice, I committed to one community based project and didn't deliver and that is something I still regret so don't commit unless you know 100% that you can follow thru.

Let's say that we are closing in on an idea, how do you suggest us to pitch it to someone? Pitching an idea is something most of (if not all of) us are afraid of... including Apple, Microsoft, Facebook among some. So, its more like a global problem than yours, I guess what can help is having confidence in your idea, which can come when you show it to your friends / family / teachers and get oohs and aahs out of it.

To pitch it outside, you should either try to launch it and gather some branding before approaching these peeps or let someone (a marketing agency for example) do it for you. As with us, we think approaching a fresh idea with VC will have them dictate their terms... so is the case with you guys, so either let your idea grow and approach or have someone do it for you. I only say this so that you guys don't undersell yourself which happens more than people think happen in our industry.

Any tips? Go through the thread, plenty around... especially the "Out of all the technical and non-technical skills that you have picked up till now. Which few do you consider as the most important and crucial your journey so far ?" question, incase you want to ask anything you can always ping me :)

Yeah and if i need to know something more, Can i PM you? Of course, I might be a bit late in the reply but you will get one always. Glad if I was of some help and best of wishes.

This question shouldn't have touched me so deep but it did. I would tell them failure doesn't mean losing, instead you learn ways not to do things / how to do things faster. As I said above, as long as you are doing something exceptional, you are learning something which no one can take away from you and it will benefit you one way or the other.

Having said that, I would say that you and I (more than you) will fail... and so does the entire world. Look at Angry Birds, they created more than 100 games before one succeeded, wasn't that journey important? I think it taught them to succeed. Look at AirBnB, they launched thrice before becoming what they are, those failures gave them experience to become AirBnB. I am not preaching, in fact these are the examples (and more) which I look up when I get dejected by the projects which we put a lot of effort in but failed.

A very candid example is GrabShack, we wanted to do something like ViralNova (viral website sold for 100 million) when we started AintViral, It didn't perform as expected and we wanted to iterate it... in between those talks, we somehow went up in discussing deep discounts and how users are unable to benefit from it the most which is when GrabShack fully materializes. Its an example I hold very deeply in my heart because that failure of AintViral got me GrabShack which otherwise wouldn't have happened.

Have you ever experienced burn out? It's easy to code when you're pissed about working in a corporate environment, so I have spent a LOT of my weekends sleeping little and coding up the rest of the time. What is it like to code 16 hours a day(I assume that should have been the case with you lots of days)?

Have you ever experienced burn out? It's easy to code when you're pissed about working in a corporate environment, so I have spent a LOT of my weekends sleeping little and coding up the rest of the time. What is it like to code 16 hours a day(I assume that should have been the case with you lots of days)?

Yes, a lot of times... It sometimes give you the feeling of why you are doing this, again and again and again. But I stopped doing it a year back, coding for straight 16 hours would somehow incapacitate me to work normally for the next day or even two. So instead, I now take a problem, keep it on my mind and think about its possibility for 4-5 hours while I do other things or even watch a serial or two (might I recommend Supernatural or Suits).

Then once I am not thinking about it (or have decided the best flow) I get down to write it and see if it works. In my opinion, that keeps me sane and allows me to think other things as well so you should try it, even playing a round of clash royale helps. As long as you are not directly thinking about the problem, the stress is less and in my opinion the problem is solved in the same amount if not less.

Having said that, there are times when you can't help but keep on coding or working for 16 hours a day if not more, looking at the question, I can see you are passionate about coding so I would advice you to preserve some of that energy and work on something of your own. I may not have directly experienced how corporate works most of the time but from close family who are there, I can tell that the only thing they worry about is that if you work for 12 hours then how to get that to 14 and so on. So, break the rat race by creating something you own... you will be surprised by what you can do if you just give it a try :)

We are not a deal aggregator but a search engine to find you the best price. We have a semantics engine which creates an around 100-500 points of any product (based on it's learning from users, product info on other sites, twitter and facebook trends). I am not sure if the other websites do that. Without naming any other website, we find that most of the coupons/deals website do a lot of manual work (even though they would be using a software in the background) while ours is completely algorithm based.

However, the proof of the pudding lies in eating, when asked similar questions from friend, I encourage them to search for something like ‘ifone’ or say ISBN of a book or a product like say ‘Bombay Dyeing Cynthia Polycotton Double Bedsheet.’ You would find that GrabShack gives accurate results all the time.

It basically boils down to the technology used and the algo behind search. Think of it like Google and alta vista (at a very small level).

2) We see it going a long way because even though the E-commerce industry would go through acquisitions and mergers, there would always be two or three big players and price comparison would always come in handy. I am not very sure about the offers and coupons though, I think they would need to transform but they can co-exists as well seeing US and other countries have had those consolidations and the proxy companies still survived.

Actually yes, there is... see flappy bird for example :). we also created several games around that time it was a fad and all earned us good income. In fact, it's all about timing... I was able to make swinging copters source code before Dong Nguyen game went online (in 3 days but without any sleep and by just thinking about what he would or would not have thru youtube). That source code on chupamobile got us $10k dollars since people wanted to launch their own take on it asap. So yes, indie developers can create a popular app or even the trend if they get it just right.

Though I would also pitch in and say that doing something original is the way to go if you want your app to be the next best thing. Advertising is not needed (unless you plan to spend more than 5-10k dollars) as that is the budget to make your game come to top (smaller for app though). Usually, we identified the best advertising platforms and have always tried to keep the budget under $1k. For us, app advice worked really well (paid video) but so did lifehacker and appadvice unpaid reviews so if you pitch it right and have a good amount of time to market + a great / addictive product, it should work well.

I was hired by Patni in campus placement (MCA) but was never really sure about it. I did work over there as an intern (and in Oracle, Johnson and Johnson as well) but never really worked traditionally for any company. I was lucky enough to get a work from home job for a US company (which wanted to jump into apps business) and that is when I started learning about apps, Since they were paying well, I refused to join Patni when the offer letter came.

But that doesn't meant that I don't believe in the culture / organizational traits. In fact, I always keep on asking my co-founder / wife (Deloitte) / other family members about their organization and the way they work. That and reading books helps me in connecting dots about how things should usually work which we then try to apply. Really believe that we Indians have a knack in refining process which is what we try to do everyday which might be the reason why are we able to survive with a small team (and you can barely call a 2 person team as "team").

As for the entrepreneur part. I tried to start a lot of companies (just with friends) and do a lot of project during college / school days... Even tried freelancing during MCA (Because good money for a college kid) even when my parents were giving me way more than enough. So, I guess the answer is somewhere in the middle.

As for the UI / UX, we sat down after doing a lot about of research on all the websites including flipkart, paytm, snapdeal, amazon, etc. And designed the website with keeping us in tandem with the design of the logo and the features we wanted to give. So, Honestly speaking, it can have a mash up of all these sites at times. And if I have to brutal honest about it then I would say that I really love the way Flipkart top bar behaves and I wanted something like that for ours as well which is why it might look similar (and I dont mean how our movies say they are inspired). But in all honestly, since the logo colors are similar to flipkart (blue symbolizes trust) and top bar is alike, you could say that though the entire site should change your mind as we really wanted something fresh.

The tech stack is LAMP, Amazon AWS, Modified PHP for multitasking / semantics engine, Wordpress and other things in between.

To start with, nothing will bring you more joy or psychedelic experience than having your own startup. Having said that, lemme address your questions with the best of my experience and abilities:

How to go from getting an idea to product ? Well, its more or less like chess. You think of all the moves you can make and all the ways to get to market and counter it by thinking how your competitors would do. Once you know how to make the best move (and if its the best move you have) then you make it. Of course, pseudo-talks aside, you need to see how your product is different and whether it saves a significant amount of time / money for the users. Not long ago (when I was still using apportable), I was struggling with conversion of app from iOS to android and I met a great entrepreneur - Jaoued Ahmed (myappconverter) who had the vision of converting apps (not games) from iOS to Android and that got me impressed. I guess what I am saying is that it doesn't matter if you have an idea which has been done before as long as you can do it better.

I have often heard that products have to be much much better , not just marginally better, than those of recognized brands in order to be successful . How true is that in the tech industry ? Of course you have to be much better, not just marginally... you are aiming for people to shift allegiance, which doesn't happen unless they find something in your product to be really worth their time or money. So I would say that is very true and not even the tech industry but everywhere. Think about it, The next teacher to replace your existing teacher has to be either very knowledgable or have lot of power, otherwise, he/she wouldn't get great ratings to justify the move.

Is it possible for a budding startup like yours to be very profitable longterm without expansion? How do you envisage the expansion phase? We have done it so I would say... yes its possible, but you should look at expansion the moment you get an opportunity. As I have described above, our expansion phase was phased out with a lot of problems / issues we had in ourselves... It makes a lot of difference, when we think about it, we always think that Skyfire launched after us and we had those features and more... if only we would have expanded rapidly, we could have earned those million dollars and retired, of course thats wishful thinking but we always wonder what if we marketed better or expanded rapidly to role out / match features exactly. So I would say a strong yes to expansion even though we have made profit and are profitable still in longterm as we could have been much more.

The expansion phase in my opinion pauses any and everything you do so plan for at least a couple of months before you dive into it. The reason is plain and simple, you are a small team and you are using most of your resources to find the right core 2 team to take the mantle. And finding the right player is not easy, you should take all the time in deciding who you want and what they bring to the table. Look at the examples of fast expanding startups who wrapped up because their core 2 wasn't strong (tinyowl for example) so always remember... Its you and your co-founders who will make a startup but the startup will only come out its "startup" phase when you pick the right team.

I have read that some 90% of startups fail. What is in your opinion the factors that makes a start-up succeed or fail? Did such statistics influence you in choosing a high risk career over safe salaried job? That is correct as far as I know, I would only like to add that 90% startups fail in the first year. If you think about it, it makes good sense, if you have conviction in idea and others in your startup do as well then it will survive any onslaught... however on the other hand, if the same is not true then your team will fall out (lack of motivation / monetary needs / etc).

In my opinion, a startup needs a leader who is willing to sacrifice his/her entire team for the idea. When people see that, they tend to admire and follow your moves, but that doesn't mean that everyone will... in the end your conviction and how you resolve your differences will come in handy. Some people are not team players but you might need them and you should always admire their sacrifices and weigh them but also cut them out when they are not following the vision. As I said earlier, its called organization for a reason... if you run around headless, eventually you are going to drop. We were lucky to realize that we need to enforce the organization part of the company but it still took us a year (almost) to recover from something which I believe I could have prevented if I would have kept personal and professional aside so do always remember and enforce it.

The stats didn't influence me much, working two jobs meant I was playing with a backup in mind. However, there did come a time where I had to choose between a two (in fact it happened twice) and I am glad I choose this. In the end, it was all about the belief or taking the red pill to continue exploring the rabbit's hole.

Finally, Is it wise to have a start-up in a non stereotypical place? For example having a IT startup in Coimbatore instead of Bangalore? Well, we started it in Mumbai (rather than Bangalore). I am from North so I had to travel a lot over there (2-3 months at a time) to be with my parents (one of the best advantages) and I continued and in fact sometimes performed better so there is nothing as a non-stereotypical place. It's your startup and you are working on it, be in any part of the world and work (frankly, that's the best part) as long as you can manage the team (Sometimes, I used to talk for 6 hours or more with my team / friends on the phone so be prepared for that... non-stereotypical workplace means non-stereotypical norms).

Okay then! this seems weird, more than that shady, finding it hard to wrap my head around how the series of comments got suddenly downvoted, when they were steadily being upvoted for a while, I guess the mods on this should take cognisance.